It should have been easier to say the truth. I wish it were, anyway. I wish, with all my heart, that I could let the words come freely. Yet the fear still claws at me, sharp as teeth on flesh. The darkness looms closer than ever, and still I cannot bring myself to say aloud the words that would free my tortured soul. And so, between me and the ink on this paper, my secrets shall remain.
It should have been easier to say the truth. I wish it were, anyway. I wish, with all my heart, that I could let the words come freely. Yet the fear still claws at me, sharp as teeth on flesh. The darkness looms closer than ever, and still I cannot bring myself to say aloud the words that would free my tortured soul. And so, between me and the ink on this paper, my secrets shall remain.
After all, fate never meant for me to go this far.
I was nothing then. I was merely a nameless orphan, just a scrawny thing left to die crushed by nature’s heavy paw. I could barely remember my parents’ scent, let alone remember any name they would have given me. That’s all I was—a shadow, an empty void where a fox should be. It was not as though I needed one anyway; even the very few who deigned to give me their attention would never as much as notice me a second time. If I wanted food, I fought for it. If I wanted warmth, I stole it. Even then, there were times where hunger gnawed at me until I crumpled where I stood, acutely aware of the feeling of ribs pressing through my skin. If I woke, it was to the crack of a scout’s whip against my side, their voices jeering as I dragged myself away.
At the time, it felt like those days would never end, not until the time I finally faded into the night’s embrace, forever nameless and forgotten. But it was precisely that rotten idea which gave me a goal to attain. I yearned ever so fiercely to escape that desolate fate, a nightmare that consumed my sleep as hunger did my waking moments. Such did I spend my early seasons—lost in that haze of hunger, dreaming that one day, foxes all over the forest would know my name and the pain I endured.
But fate does not grant mercy—it twists, it taunts. When the chance to carve my name into history finally came, it arrived not as triumph, but as a corpse lying in my path.
Half-covered in leaves, it reeked of dried blood and rot so overpowering I had to fight not to lose the little food I had in my stomach. Whoever this was had perished days ago, and from the look of his torn-out throat, not pleasantly. I didn’t care much for it. At least, not as much as I cared about the shining dagger still sheathed at his heel. It was a beautiful thing, carved with writing so ornate I could not have read it if I tried. The blade was polished to an almost blinding sparkle in my eyes, seeming intent on making its own light even there in that gloomy place.
And so I took it—not because I thought it meant anything special or that I felt it befitting of a stray like me. The only thought in my mind was that surely, it was worth enough to buy myself a hot meal, or maybe even shelter to lodge in for a little while if I was lucky. Wherever it would take me, I only hoped that it would be somewhere far away from that sight—and far from its reminder that I, too, would soon rot just the same.
I might as well have on that fateful night.
Vaithenii. “Ever-growing”, in the language of us foxes. Before then, I had only heard it in reference to the moon a sunset or two before its light was brightest.
I forgot who had been the first one to speak that name. It may have been the trader, ears falling flat against their skull the moment I placed the dagger at their table. Or the scout, blocking my frantic attempt to exit. Perhaps it was the fox-folk outside, the ones who had gathered so quickly, their voices rising in joyous yips. Whoever had said it first, it didn’t matter—one voice became two, then a dozen, then a hundred.
Vaithenii.
I could not even speak before they spoke for me. They turned their heads, they noticed me, they bowed to me in a way I could scarcely comprehend.
For the first time in my life, I felt seen.
I should have said the truth then. I should have run, back when it could have been ever so simple to do so. I would have been punished for it, accused a murderer, died worse-off than the hapless tod they had mistaken me for. But perhaps, at least, I would have died as myself.
Instead, I gave in both to my fear of death and to my grand delusions. Oh, the sound of that name—the weight of it on their tongues, the way it settled over me like something long-lost and finally found. It was the first thing that had ever felt mine. Every scrap of food had been fought for, every heartbeat of sleep stolen. But this? It came to me like an ember, tiny and flickering in my paw—too small to burn, too fragile to refuse.
What a cruel thing Fate can be, indeed. It was ever so easy to convince myself that whatever this name would bring me would be rightfully mine—that I deserved it for all those seasons of suffering, that for however strange it felt to say, it would soon smooth itself like a river stone on my maw. All it would take was time, I told myself. That was certainly how it felt at first.
It was I who had brought this name to glory, to a reign so bright and splendorous that not even the great ter-cities west of the forest could ignore us any longer. We granted power to our allies, and to our enemies, swift annihilation. The fangs that had torn out my namesake’s throat were eager to finish what they had started. Yet they underestimated how eager I had been to tear them out of their sockets before they could reveal the truth. I told myself it was justice, not for the obfuscation it really was. In my desperation, I had made it so the lie could finally take full root. Now, there was nothing left to stop it from digging me in, deeper and deeper.
By the time I realized it, things had already begun changing for the worse. First had been the nightmares—new ones that begun to arise in my head even in my waking moments. It was a whisper. Give it back. ‘It’ was many things, depending on where I was and what I was doing. The soft bed I was sleeping on, the gilded seat I occupied, the sumptuous meal on my plate. All of it was supposed to have been his, not mine, and there was nothing I could ever do to earn it for my own. At first, I thought it was my guilty conscience, meaningless and ultimately without power to do anything. But the whispers only became sharper, more insistent. It was a voice that was not my own, and yet could not silence. I could no longer deny that who I had to contend with was the specter of that long-rotted fox whose name I had stolen.
Still, I hear that name echoing through the halls. It should have filled me with pride; it should have reminded me of all I have built and won. All it fills me with now is dread. Like some sort of incantation, they invoke it. It no longer felt like a fox’s name, let alone one that I could ever feel comfortable calling my own.
I cannot imagine telling them anything. They would never believe me. I have neither friend nor mate to whom I could confess my secrets, and even if I had any, it would never have been me they were speaking to, but to the fox who they believed lay behind that cursed name.
I eat to fullness, yet my stomach feels hollower than it ever felt when I scrounged the streets for morsels.
I sleep until the sun is hot in the sky, and still cold weight drags me down like ice from my snout to my tail.
I have all this, but am still alone.
Forgotten. Nameless.
It should have been easier to tell the truth. I have had time enough to do so.
But it was never to be. And so I am left with my final option.
The dagger remains on my nightstand, glimmering just as it did back then. The symbol marking my leadership over the Kemii. The catalyst to a name that swallowed me whole.
My mind feels clearer than it has been in many seasons.
As it gave, so it shall take away.
By the time this ink dries, I will already be gone.
I hope my subjects can forgive me.
But it’s not like they knew me to begin with.